


hands

by phyripo



Series: plotless [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5192309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in Estonia's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hands

He rarely does things he considers impractical or useless.

Estonia looks at the old piano in the attic, and his fingers twitch. It’s been a while. A while since he was up here, an even longer while since he’s last played the piano. He thinks of Ukraine, always so happy to hear him play, ready to compliment him, even if they both knew Poland was probably better. He likes making Ukraine happy. He likes making people happy, in general.

Smiling wistfully, Estonia goes to look for the heap of old glasses that should be around somewhere. After an unfortunate incident with Finland and a mosh pit, the pair that he’d been wearing lately had become unusable, and he doesn’t have the energy to go to his optician.

When he’s found his old glasses, he wanders over to the piano. Lets his slender fingers ghost over the dusty keys. He always kept them meticulously clean, these keys, and now the piano is standing here, gathering dust in his attic. It’s really a shame. Estonia decides he’ll call Lithuania over someday, to help him get it downstairs. He automatically reaches for the pen in his pocket to write it on his right hand, as he always does with things he shouldn’t forget, before he remembers that he took the pen from his pocket for that precise reason. The discoloured bit of skin is probably never going away, but he’s determined to kick at least one bad habit.

 He takes out his phone instead, setting a reminder for tomorrow afternoon.

It’s almost seven. There’s a reminder to pay his bills scheduled at eight, but Estonia reckons he can fill out the forms right now, while he waits for his food to be delivered. He didn’t really trust himself to cook while his depth perception was all screwed, so he’d ordered a pizza before he’d remembered the old glasses in the attic. But maybe it’s just as well, because he’s tired himself out during the weekend with Finland. As much as Estonia loves him, he’s gotten used to the much more subdued version of fun that the Baltics and Ukraine usually prefer.

Realizing he’s been standing there staring blankly at his phone for a minute or two, Estonia shakes his head and heads back downstairs. He finds the bills and fills them out, and stumbles over his words when he accidentally starts talking to the pizza delivery girl in Russian.

She smiles at him.

“Sorry,” he says, and then, “Keep the change.” Except that there is no change, because Estonia likes to be efficient and had the right amount of money on hand. So he apologizes again, and the pizza girl smiles and wishes him a nice day.

He eats his pizza from the box, and has an orange for dessert, because it’s getting colder outside and vitamin C is good for you, even when you’re a nation. Then he eats another orange, because he likes oranges, and he likes that he can eat oranges whenever he wants to, nowadays. When he’s done, it’s half eight, and he’s thinking about the old piano again. And biting his nails as a result, which is really not good. Writing things on his hands and biting his nails, the banes of his (hands’) existence. He only notices when he bites down on the bandage covering his right middle finger, which he’d accidentally bit to bleeding when he’d lost Finland in the masses of Helsinki. Finland had thought it was funny to give him a bandage covered in Moomins.

It’s a little bit funny. Estonia smiles at his middle finger and decides to start up his computer. Maybe there’s news from the government.

At eleven, an alarm goes off on his phone, and Estonia almost falls off his desk chair.

**Time to sleep** , the alarm proclaims. Estonia, in the middle of reading about – something; he’d gone to Wikipedia to look up something about the mobile network and had eventually ended up reading about the Eurovision Song Contest and humming his 2012 song under his breath – sighs and rubs his eyes. It  _is_  time to go to bed, he realizes. There’s things to do tomorrow. Things that are already programmed into his phone, so he doesn’t worry about them. Better to leave tomorrow for tomorrow, and now just go to sleep. He shuts the computer off, mentally berating himself for getting distracted.

He’s so tired.

* * *

In the morning, Estonia feels much better. He wakes up at six to take the medicine to calm his thyroid, turns on the heating, then goes back to sleep for another hour and a half. He wakes up to a nice, warm house, which makes him feel good instantly. He eats some toast and a banana for breakfast, takes a vitamin supplement. In the shower, he picks the Moomin bandage from his finger, smiling at it as he throws it away. Many things are better in this day and age. There weren’t Moomin bandages, before. And even if there had been, Estonia doubts he would have seen them.

He reads the newspaper – he’s been meaning to switch to an online paper for some time. He physically restrains himself from grabbing the pen that’s lying on the edge of the table to write it on his hand, but he’s also not sure it’s actually important enough to program it into his phone. Maybe he’ll buy some sticky notes when he goes out for groceries, and just stick a reminder on the fridge. Or better yet, on his computer screen. That way he’ll be sure to see it. That is a good idea, Estonia thinks. His calendar would be far too full of trivial things if he kept on putting everything in.

As if on cue, his phone chirps.

It’s a text from his boss, reminding him of the lunch meeting they’re having. Estonia bites the nail of his left index finger, and it starts to bleed. Sighing, he gets up to find yet another bandage.

He buys groceries. Sticky notes. More bandages. Still revels in paying with Euros. He answers a text from Finland and updates his blog when he comes home.

It starts raining when he has to go meet his boss, so he digs out an umbrella and walks to the bus station. There’s a woman listening to music on her headphones sitting across from him in the bus, and she smiles at him when he accidentally pokes her leg with his umbrella. He smiles back, because here’s this woman, this Estonian woman, listening to music from who knows where, sitting on a bus that’s free to ride, smiling while it rains out.

Maybe there are lots of things wrong with the world, and maybe not everything is right with Estonia, but at least there are things worth living for, and things worth smiling about.

Estonia doesn’t gather any more bandages that day.


End file.
